The Better Mousetrap

May 16, 2020

Back for today…

Been a while since I blogged. Pandemic’s focused me on my fictional writing more than my editorial pieces. Here’s one I had to push out today.

Do you hate hoses? I hate them. Remember when your parents made you water the yard, and then complained afterward because you didn’t “wind” up the hose and put it back on that little (and inadequate) holder by the spigot? What about when you dragged the hose from one side of the yard to another and it kinked up or hung on something? Your herculean effort to undo the hideous affliction until you admit defeat and walk over and fix it?

My biggest hose nemesis is the leak. You know the one. Where no matter how you screw the hose adapter to anything, there’s inevitably always a leak. Something’s that leak is so bad, you shut the water off and try again, only to be even more frustrated because you can’t unscrew the damn connector from whatever it is connected to. Think about the intense emotional frustration you felt as you fought your way towards successful mastery of the innocuous garden hose, and then tell me that you don’t hate hoses.

Then there’s someone, probably your sibling or father, who gently takes the infuriating tube out of your hands, and skillfully, without even breaking a sweat, winds it up into a beautiful, spool of green plastic which fits onto the holder perfectly. Or with a quick turn of a wrist, unhooks the hose with little effort and hands it to you. I hate those people. Not really. I mean I do hate them at the one particular moment, just not necessarily 100% of the time.

Mostly, I hate feeling like a failure. Which is ridiculous when you think about it that: an inability to successfully wield a garden hose makes you feel like a total and utter failure? It’s enough to think you need a shrink.

As an adult, I bought garden hoses for my home but left them lying about on the ground (wherever they fell when I finished using them). Every once in awhile, I’d try to garner some pride in my home’s appearance for the sake of my neighbors at the very least and try to wind the darn things up. Even had one boyfriend show me the secret to a perfect wind: when you twist the hose for the next circle let the hose twist in the direction it wants to twist. That works better with mic and speaker chords better than hoses, but I did get a modicum of success with this method.

Then there are those unsolvable leaks. Yes, I use washers. I even ordered a boat-load of them on Amazon in different sizes, thicknesses, and materials to make sure all the bases were covered. Alas, I still get leaks. I think I’ve successfully attached a hose to a connection without a leak maybe once which is a big feat considering I live in an RV and my only connection to running water comes from a hose. All the other times, I’ve had to call the RV park manager to come do it for me. He’s very nice and always happy to help, but I get so embarrassed asking for help. Regardless, I’ve learned not to disconnect my RV water hose unless he or my neighbor is around.

But there’s the OTHER hose that I need. The one that sprays water over the ceramic grill base when it needs cleaning. Then there are the plants that need watering sometimes, rinsing off the tree-sex from anything left outside, the occasional doggie bowl that needs filling when you’re sitting outside with the fur babies. Not to mention when you forget to pick up after the fur babies that one time and step in it. You have to use a hose for that! Although I have thrown away shoes to avoid it.

My neighbor, the nice one I mentioned above, is never in his RV. He only uses it when his work makes him drive in from the Fort Smith area. He also understands my yearning for independence, so when he’s gone, he unhooks his RV from his water faucet so I can attach my hose, leaks and all, to his. I agreed to water the cannas the his wife planted for him at the back of his RV space.

That worked great until this past winter when the hose attachment fell off the green plastic part of the tubing. Great, now I have a plastic hose which I hate and that is now completely useless (if you have any uses for a hose like this, please enlighten me). So I jumped onto Amazon in search of a replacement.

Where you aware that plastic hoses are expensive? I mean, for a long, green plastic tube with a metal thingie on each end, you would think it had parts made out of gold or diamonds. So I looked up hoses on Walmart, Lowes, and Home Depot where I found considerably cheaper options. The disparity of pricing got me to thinking. Why?

Maybe my frustration is due to only being exposed to cheap Walmart garden hoses? Maybe if I bought the Cadillac brand of hoses, I might not hate them so much. So I went back to Amazon. Then I saw it. THE hose of my dreams. Well, once that at least didn’t look too hard to “wind” up and looked like kinking wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Sure, it was way expensive, and it came with all the dooly-bopper attachments that I already had (attachments which leaked too!). I bought it anyway with the opinion that if it was going to leak at least it won’t kink.

When the package arrived at my post office box, I was so unenthused that it stayed in one of those pickup lockers for almost a week before I retrieved it. Then it stayed in my RV’s outside storage cubbard until just after this Pandemic began. Wow. Did I say WOW?

No leaks. Not even a hint of a leak. The attachments work better than any hose attachments I’ve ever used before with NO LEAKS! Wow. The only thing wrong: it wasn’t long enough to reach the other side of my RV. Darn, and it was expensive. However, being so impressed by this thing, I ordered another so I could attach it to the original one to get the length needed for my purposes.

That was just after Amazon was only no longer storing essential items in their warehouses due to the Pandemic. So, it went on backorder. Like WAAYYYY back-ordered. The delivery date kept changing until it finally rested and stayed on mid-June. Even gave me the option to cancel my order, but no, I was determined to get that hose extension no matter how long it took.

I was just about to go borrow a hose from my father’s house, when Amazon notified me last month I would receive my goodie by May 15th. Just got it today. Sure, I have less money, two expensive new garden hoses, and a complete set of attachment (which I have no use for whatsoever), but I feel less like a failure. Surprising how something so silly can me feel so powerful, successful and independent. Yay for the Cadillac of hoses.

TBI Pro Garden Hose Expandable – Superior Strength 3750D / 4-Layers Latex/Extra-Strong Brass Connectors / 10-Way Durable Zinc Water Spray Nozzle, 2-Way…

Bad Habits, Hoarding, and COV-19

March 13, 2020

What happens when a reformed food hoarder is faced with the Novel Coronavirus (COV-19) isolation requirements? I just got myself where I needed to be last month: only buying what I needed to last a week or a month depending on the item’s perishable condition. Now what?

Okay, to be fair, I did buy a HUGE thing of toilet paper this past week. Just like everyone else. In my defense, I buy the same package every year and I only buy it once a year. As I was down to only about 4-5 rolls, I naturally decided to pick up a package for 2020. So there is that.

But the rest is just awful. I have always hoarded food. Not because it’s that important to me, but because that is how I was taught. Being in a military family, we got paid once a month. My mother, like all the other dutiful Army wives, would go to the commissary on payday and buy enough food to feed a family of five for an entire month. Being the youngest, she always took me along.

So from a very early age, I can remember at least one shopping buggy overflowing the top of its wired-metal sides and sometimes two buggies. Why sometimes one and then sometimes two, I have no idea. I assume maybe that the two buggy months were ones in which we went camping? Maybe my sister knows and will comment below.

Just to note, not one of our family members were ever overweight while living at home. We got that way AFTER we left home. We were all painfully skinny growing up even with a fully stocked pantry.

Naturally, when I left home, I shopped like my mother. Filling the buggy with everything a five-person family would need for a month… but… um… it was only me. As an aside, I also only know how to cook for three people at a time.

Forty years later, I was still filling the buggy, but I found most everything I bought never got consumed. Most of it ended up in the garbage. A true waste of my hard-earned paycheck. So last month, I decided to crack down and train myself to purchase only what I needed to get through a week. (Toilet paper aside, of course!).

I got through THREE WHOLE WEEKS like this and was loving it. No longer did my refrigerator overflow with things I just wasn’t interested in eating or using to prepare meals. I started taking the time to cook the vegetables and rice alongside the meat (usually, it was only meat).

My pantry was almost empty when I went to the store. I was happy. So was my bank account. Enter Novel Coronavirus (COV-19)!! I went way overboard this past week. I have NEVER bought more than two packages of Splenda, ever. I now proudly own five large bags, and I’m still wondering… is that enough?

The good news? I can stay hunkered down in my RV for at least a month without having to go in search of food. Thanks, Mom. 

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Making Lemonade Out of Lemons

March 9, 2020

My mother used to say this every once in a while when I complained about something I didn’t like. As a child, I always thought it meant to go open a lemonade stand on the corner. I tended to frown at her heavily when she said it. We lived mostly on Army bases, so this wasn’t really an option.

As an adult, I attributed it to mean an ability to turn something sour into something sweet. …but then came Country Time and Crystal Lite. The whole convenience of making lemonade without lemons sort of lost itself for a while.

In retrospect, I love sour things. SweetTarts are a favorite of mine (although my girls can top me by surviving a package of Atomic Warheads!). In elementary school, I would cut lemons, sprinkle sugar over them and just eat them like oranges until my mother told me this practice would eat the enamel off my teeth. I don’t know if it does or if she was just tired of always running out of lemons for her tea.

Regardless, I consider my writing to be just that… turning something sour into something sweet and, in this case, something new. I’m re-inventing myself… AGAIN. Out of many failures comes success!

I’m about to retire from my day job in Information Technology. I was looking forward to retiring, playing golf, enjoying the time I have left. Two years ago, I packed up and sold my home in St. Louis, Missouri and moved home to Arkansas for a bit. I wanted to regroup, reconnect and lessen my responsibilities.

I also, unfortunately, left half my paycheck in Missouri.* So now my Social Security isn’t going to be quite what I expected = No travel for me, which is the second saddest thing I’ve ever heard. (One day I may tell you about the first.)

My answer to all of this is to make lemonade. I need a supplemental income in my elderly years so I can see beautiful buildings, art, and gardens. Maybe afford Hospice if I eventually need it. I tried Photography but I had NO idea how physically hard that was going to be and all those hours and hours for so little pay. (You need to pay your photographers people!)

Writing, however, has always been a joy and something I’ve been good at since Seventh Grade English, Mrs. Schaffer (Southwood High School, Shreveport, Louisiana). She was the best!

I’ve written for newspapers, web sites, technical documents, how to’s, letters, marketing campaigns, newsletters… the list goes on and on. Now, I’m writing for joy and profit.

I’m making lemonade out of lemons, and I invite you to come along for the ride.

BTW – where did that expression come from? According to Wikipedia, Elbert Hubbard used it in an obituary he wrote for dwarf actor Marshall Pinckney Wilder. Here is the quote:

“He was a walking refutation of that dogmatic statement, Mens sana in corpore sano. His was a sound mind in an unsound body. He proved the eternal paradox of things. He cashed in on his disabilities. He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.”

Elbert Hubbard, 1915

*Thank you Tish for the use of that expression!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_life_gives_you_lemons,_make_lemonade